The Rebuttal: An intimate exploration of the story from my point of view.

Many of you followed along as my wife unveiled the story of our acquaintance, courtship, and marriage. It was a three-part series filled with twists, turns, and various accounts of ‘boo-hoos,’ ‘whoo-hoos,’ ‘who’d been rude,’ ‘who’d felt shooed,’ ‘who’d had no clue,’ and ultimately, ‘who wooed who,’ and ‘how who wooed.’ She did a wonderful job, but an accurate account of such a story requires a look through the eyes of all parties involved. So without further ado….. it’s Woo Review, Part Two….

The beginning of the beginning (before I knew what was beginning)

Indeed I did participate in said show choir, and indeed I did sing REM’s “Man on the Moon.” But did I wear a cowboy hat?? Absolutely not. It was very clearly a Mexican-campesino-style straw-type hat. Very different animal. Now, this really wasn’t my beginning to the story since I had no idea that Stephanie was there. (In these situations it’s so hard to focus on individual people when you have hundreds, nay, thousands of adoring fans chanting your name, and hanging on your every perfectly-executed note of musical genius.) But I do recall that one of the nights of the show, I absolutely NAILED the Elvis-esque “Hey Baby” line and accompanying hip-twist. I like to think that that was due to a positive energy in the room emanating from a very special person, which amplified the extent of my rock-star quality and overall awesomeness.

The middle of the beginning (which was actually my beginning of the beginning).

I like math. It’s true. (Well, as long as we don’t consider Differential Equations to be math, as any rational human being would not). In high school, I really enjoyed math and I was dang good at it. For this reason, it was a given that I would take Calculus AP my senior year. It was always the plan. When it came time to register, though, there was a little hiccup. I had previously been in this choir where people dress up in ridiculous Renaissance-style (and not-so-Renaissance-style) outfits and sing songs that usually make very little sense. But this class was offered at the same time as the math class. Now, I had joined this choir along with some of my very best friends. (For the sake of anonymity, let’s call them Tony, Daniel and Alan.) Anyway, they all graduated when I had a year left. So….. it was a no-brainer. Ditch the crazy, tight-wearing, singing weirdos and take an advanced, unrequired math class like all the really cool kids do. And yet… I didn’t. I don’t actually remember making this decision, and today, I really can’t imagine myself doing it. It just doesn’t make sense to me. I know myself, and I know how I was in high school. Given the same situation 100 times, I’m sure I would choose the math class 99 times. Why I didn’t then appeared to be inexplicable….

But that which was then inexplicable, is now unequivocally explicable, inexplicably explainable, and exclamatorily explicit. Because as I was sitting there in that choir at the beginning of the year, thinking to myself that I was way too cool for these people around me, in walked the most beautiful and gorgeous of God’s many creations…. (Okay… let’s get this out right off the bat, I didn’t know she was a freshman and maybe 15 years old. She didn’t seem like it to me. So get off my back about the whole cradle-robbing stuff, aight??) I really thought that she was so beautiful. And not just her looks. Something about the way she just acted and talked and presented herself just blew me away. I honestly remember thinking one day, before I even formally met her, that I could see myself spending my life with a girl EXACTLY like her. So needless to say, I found out how old she was and it sucked…. But luckily, the teacher rearranged the seating and put us next to each other. And this is where it started for me. We kind of started talking and got familiar with each other, but then she did something that completely won me over… she started making fun of me. I don’t know why, but that playful informal comfortableness of being able to make fun of someone was just a huge warm-fuzzy for me. It was official—I really liked this girl. Of course, she was too young to date, but we just got to be really great friends… but man, did I like this girl.

So the rest of the middle of the beginning was exactly as Stephanie said. We had lunch together, we rode to shows together, we hung out a few times, and we wrote in each other’s yearbooks. It was a joke that we had that I would always tell her that we’d end up getting married. Of course it was a joke, but I really felt strongly about that first impression I had of her in the choir room. And I really wanted it to happen. Have you seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? It was kind of like that quote….

“Sloane's as big a problem. She has another year of high school. How do I deal with that? I was serious when I said I'd marry her… I would.”

So then, she turned 16, we went on some dates, but then I went on a mission.

The end of the beginning (finally on the same page)

So my mission was great. I loved it. And I LOVED hearing from Stephanie. I knew that she was dating other people and all and I certainly would not have had it any other way. I just really hoped she would still want to be with me when I got back. So I came home, and yes, I was very weird. I didn’t deal with the culture shock very well. I felt like I didn’t want to disappoint anyone, including myself, by coming home and jumping right back into a social life. In short, I didn’t know how a newly-returned missionary was “supposed” or “expected” to act. HOWEVER, not all of the weirdness with respect to my relationship with Stephanie was all my fault. (This is where the rebuttal comes in… hehe). When I got home, somebody had failed to inform me that she was dating somebody somewhat exclusively at the time that I returned. I found this out through the grapevine… So Stephie says she was hoping for a grand, huggy-lovey-dovey reunion, but come on… who isn’t going to be a little weirded-out by such a discovery? I think that the awkwardness between us was largely a product of my culture-shock, but, dag-nabbit, I had a right to be weirded out by this discovery, didn’t I????? Ok… I feel better now!

So things slowly progressed, and before long, I was head over heels for this girl, and we was like peas n carrots again. But then Steph went to BYU. I didn’t want to go to BYU. I stayed in Vegas. I didn’t want to be away from Stephanie. So I chose the lesser of two very evil evils. I followed her to BYU. Every day, I fell deeper in love with this perfect girl. It killed me that she went away to Spain for four months, leaving me alone in the place that I decided I could tolerate as long as I was with her (nothing like a little guilt trip… hehe). But I know that it was very important to her, and she had a great time and like she said, we finally got to have that magical reunion when she got back.

Well, the engagement story was pretty well summed up by Stephanie in her post, and really, my point of view couldn’t be much different from hers since we were inseparable at this point. I will add this part for my point of view… Asking her father for permission to marry her…. Holy crap…. That was an experience. Stephanie’s dad is the greatest. But if he wanted to, he could literally break my miserable body in half. And the man loves his daughters so much, that in the back of my mind, I seriously considered this to be a possibility for having the gall to suggest that I am a good enough person to be with his daughter. But of course, that didn’t happen and it was actually a great experience.

I had a lot of fun planning the proposal, and I was really happy that I was able to surprise her. The wedding was awesome, the reception was gorgeous, and my dream of marrying that beautiful girl who by no coincidence walked into my life nearly eight years ago actually came true.

I am the luckiest guy in the world. If two years of marriage can hold so much happiness, I marvel at the idea of having an eternity to go. I love you Stephanie.